The full report — HERE.

According to press reports, over 3,000 people gathered in the square. Throughout the day, the protest degenerated into confrontations with gendarmes: stones, bottles, pieces of kerb, and metal fences were thrown, and the Gendarmerie used tear gas. According to the balance communicated by the Bucharest Gendarmerie on the evening of September 15, 24 people required medical attention, including ten gendarmes; four people were taken to hospital. 47 people were taken to police stations, one person was detained, and two Gendarmerie vehicles were damaged.

Representatives of livestock breeders' associations publicly distanced themselves from those involved in the violence and stated that groups who are not livestock breeders appeared in the square, while the Prefect of the Capital declared that "oier people don't organise like this." The protest was rapidly taken up politically and amplified on social networks.

Alongside reports about the farmers' demands and the street violence, unconfirmed or conspiracist narratives also circulated online. Some claimed that the authorities had deliberately introduced provocateurs to compromise the protest. Others stated that the violence had been prepared to justify repression or even the imposition of a state of emergency, that the Gendarmerie had deliberately provoked the incidents, or that the press had presented only the "Government's version" in a coordinated manner.

Other posts connected the protest to themes already recurring in disinformation ecosystems: "stolen elections," the illegitimacy of those currently in power, the existence of a "system" controlling institutions, and the need for a broader confrontation with it. An important theme was linked to anti-European narratives of the type "Europe's goal is to leave us without animals, without livestock farming, without agriculture in Romania." These narratives circulated alongside mobilisation messages, aggressive language, and posts that justified or minimised the violence that occurred during the demonstration.

To understand how the protest was presented and amplified online, we looked at three things: the main narratives about the demonstration and the confrontations with the Gendarmerie; how these messages circulated on Facebook and TikTok and, above all, how much of that circulation represented real sharing and how much mere repetition, seconds apart, of the same texts by dense groups of accounts; and finally, what the pages wrote alongside mobilisation messages and aggressive or violence-inciting language.

We analysed 1,186 public posts from Facebook and 100 posts from TikTok collected during the period September 14–15, 2026, tracking identical or very similar messages distributed by multiple pages, the intervals in which they were published, and the level of interaction generated. Here is what we found:

• Mobilisation was inflated online the day before. The strongest coordinated distribution episode in the corpus does not concern the violence, but the mobilisation on the evening of September 14: between 19:00 and 19:15, dozens of pages republished verbatim the message about "almost 200,000 farmers" expected in Victoriei Square. The next day, over 3,000 people were in the square. Approximately 90% of the pairs in the final network had already formed by 19:15.
• A small and highly concentrated network. At 15:30 on September 15, the network reaches 160 accounts and 12 multiplied unique texts. Two components built around nearly identical variants of the same message (the difference being mainly punctuation) contain 100 of the 160 accounts and nearly 90% of all pairs.
• Coordinated distribution, in the technical sense; not necessarily an operation. A significant part of the circulation does not consist of similar accounts about the same event, but of verbatim republication of the same formulations, at intervals of seconds, in dense groups of accounts. The network reaches 160 accounts and 12 multiplied unique texts; two components built around nearly identical variants of the same message contain 100 of the 160 accounts and nearly 90% of all pairs. The nominally identified nodes (Case de Vis, femina.ro, ROL.ro, News TV, Știrile TVF) are content aggregation and syndication pages, not political pages. The data do not permit conclusions about intent or about who organised the coordination.
• A real grievance with four distinct dimensions. The corpus is dominated by a single informational event, but overlapping around it are the farmers' economic demands, the confrontation with the Gendarmerie, the political dispute over the legitimacy of the protest, and the structural problems of agriculture.
• A pro-Russian discourse that changes its framing over the course of the day. Channels previously documented as part of the pro-Kremlin propaganda ecosystem move within a few hours from a descriptive account of the demands to the provocation–escalation–state of emergency scenario, and then to contesting the way television stations presented the confrontations.
• Explicit calls for mobilisation and violence. Among the most visible posts appear calls of the type "Occupy Bucharest!," the expression of satisfaction at gendarmes being struck, and claims that "the REVOLUTION has begun," many grafted onto the theme of "stolen elections" and the idea of a "system" that must be confronted.
• On TikTok, the protest was amplified through content associated with the hashtag #protest. In the analysed sample, the discourse focused particularly on the confrontations with the Gendarmerie, the alleged "provocateurs," and the politicisation of the demonstration.
• References to the EU fall into two registers. From the identified posts, some concretely discuss the export restrictions and negotiations with the European Commission; others place the EU in a conflictual frame, with formulations such as "Europe's goal is to leave us without animals, without livestock farming, without agriculture" or the theory that "the EU would want to starve Romania." Brussels thus becomes, for some posts, an administrative reference point, and for others, a symbol in the broader dispute about sovereignty.

What did we look at? 

We analysed 1,286 public posts collected around the September 15 protest, tracking the way in which the demonstration was presented and amplified online. We looked at the main narratives about the protest and the confrontations with the Gendarmerie, at the mobilisation messages, and at the posts using aggressive or violent language.

We also tracked identical or very similar messages distributed by multiple pages, the intervals in which they were published, and the level of interaction generated. Separately, we analysed the way in which the protest was presented by channels previously documented as part of the pro-Russian propaganda ecosystem and the way their discourse changed over the course of the day.

What was said on Facebook about the protest? 

The analysed content is dominated by a single informational event. It contains, however, four distinct dimensions: the concrete demands of the farmers and livestock breeders; the confrontation in Victoriei Square and the Gendarmerie's response; the political competition for the interpretation and legitimation of the protest; and the structural problems of agriculture regarding funding, technology, and the adaptation of farms.

The coordination analysis shows that a significant part of the circulation does not consist merely of similar accounts of the same event. It also involves verbatim republication of the same formulations, at very short intervals, in dense groups of accounts.

The strongest episode is concentrated on September 14, between 19:00 and 19:15. Other, smaller waves continue on September 15. This pattern justifies describing the data as coordinated distribution, in the technical sense. The dataset alone does not, however, permit conclusions regarding intent or the organiser of the coordination.

The four themes

The automatically generated thematic labels (17 distinct labels, initially grouped into three general categories) were brought together into four analytical themes: the mobilisation of farmers and shepherds and the economic demands; the escalation of the protest and the Gendarmerie's intervention; the politicisation of the protest and the dispute over its legitimacy; structural problems of agriculture. The way in which the labels were consolidated is described in the Methodology section.

Mobilisation of farmers and economic demands

The concrete core of the demands concerns restrictions on the activity of livestock breeders: the halting of animal slaughter, the resumption of exports, the sale of products at a price considered fair, and the unblocking of farmers' activities. One narrative reports that over a thousand shepherds took to the streets demanding a halt to animal slaughter and the unblocking of exports. Other texts relay demands to be able to export and sell goods at a price considered fair, in the context of restrictions on ovine exports and measures associated with small ruminant plague.

In parallel, some accounts present the mobilisation in a broader register, with calls addressed not only to farmers but to other social categories as well. This extension partially transforms the sectoral demand into a general critique of governance. Other texts remain focused on exports, prices, sanitary-veterinary restrictions, and the economic conditions of agricultural activity. The consolidated theme reflects the professional and economic basis of the demonstration, regardless of whether the texts describe it as a protest by farmers, shepherds, livestock breeders, or several categories together.

Escalation of the protest and the Gendarmerie's intervention

The theme concentrates accounts of the Gendarmerie's cordons, the filters organised ahead of the demonstration, the blocking of traffic, participants passing through the law enforcement devices, shoving, and the use of tear gas sprays. Some texts present the filters, the delimitation of the demonstration space, or the intervention of the forces of order as excessive measures. One piece claims, for example, that coaches carrying shepherds on their way to the protest were stopped.

The accounts do not offer a single interpretation of the escalation. Some attribute the incidents to protesters who allegedly forced through the Gendarmerie's device. Others place the emphasis on the actions of the forces of order. Other texts introduce the hypothesis of "infiltrated" persons, "provocateurs," or "instigators." Two opposing narrative frames thus appear in the corpus: one in which peaceful protesters are disproportionately confronted by the forces of order, and one in which gendarmes attempt to control a demonstration that has turned violent.

Politicisation of the protest and the dispute over its legitimacy

The third theme is transversal: many texts automatically classified as being about confrontations discuss, in fact, the role of AUR, of George Simion, of sovereigntist supporters, and the alleged presence of provocateurs or infiltrated persons.

The category was kept separate from the general incidents theme because the emphasis falls not on the physical confrontation between demonstrators and gendarmes, but on the political interpretation of the protest and the dispute over the legitimacy of the actors involved.

George Simion appears in multiple texts through a message in which he calls on farmers and other protesters to demonstrate peacefully and asks the forces of order to act with restraint, while also introducing the idea of the existence of "provocateurs" or "foreign interests." The message also expresses AUR's support for the farmers. The same message is reproduced in full or near-full by other pages and accounts.

In the opposite direction, other texts criticise Simion, either for his alleged involvement in the mobilisation of participants or for the subsequent call for calm. One piece claims that this position weakened the protest's message and shifted attention away from the farmers' demands.

Other posts attribute the incidents to "agitators," "extremists," "provocateurs," or politically associated persons. Texts from the opposite direction argue that such persons were infiltrated precisely to compromise the demonstration. These claims represent positions and interpretations present in the corpus; the analysed data do not permit independent verification of their accuracy.

What can be established from outside the corpus is something else: the Gendarmerie publicly stated that some participants arrived with batons and that it is considering the hypothesis of infiltrated persons, while livestock breeders' associations and the Prefect of the Capital distanced themselves from the violent groups (see introduction). The online narrative about provocateurs "planted" by the authorities starts from these statements but reverses their meaning.

The theme reflects a competition to define the protest: a legitimate professional protest by farmers, a politicised demonstration, an event hijacked by radical groups, a protest compromised by provocations, a demonstration instrumentalised by political actors.

Structural problems of agriculture: funding, modernisation, and adaptation

The fourth consolidated theme brings together the five labels from the "Agricultural problems" category that do not have the protest or the violence in Victoriei Square as their direct subject: "support for European and Romanian farmers," "challenges and solutions in agriculture," "financial support for farmers," "challenges and innovations in agriculture," and "daily challenges for farmers."

The labels were brought together because they describe different dimensions of the same structural problem: farmers' capacity to sustain and modernise their economic activity. Unlike the labels concerning the protest, the differences between these categories relate to the type of solution or difficulty discussed (funding, technology, consultancy, agricultural practices, production conditions, European policies).

The texts discuss access to subsidies and funding, machinery acquisition, technical consultancy, fertilisation, agricultural technologies, local production, and adaptation to environmental requirements. One piece discusses the delay in DR-13 funding for agricultural machinery acquisition and mentions support of up to 300,000 euros per project, in a context where farmers reportedly do not yet have a clear calendar for accessing the funds.

The modernisation component appears in texts about no-till farming, fertilisers, and adapting technologies to farm conditions. One piece describes the transition to the no-till system (direct seeding or no-plough farming), the necessary investments in machinery, the modification of the work calendar, and the adaptation of fertilisation. Another emphasises horticultural consultancy tailored to each crop and the direct intervention of specialists on farms.

In the category of farmer support, the dimension of environmental policies also appears. One text argues that farmers who reduce emissions, protect the soil, save water, or contribute to biodiversity conservation bear additional costs and would need additional forms of remuneration. Other pieces describe farmers' markets and the support of local producers as instruments for community development and the maintenance of local production.

This theme is distinct from the conflict in Victoriei Square. It captures broader and recurring problems in the agricultural sector: access to money and investment, technological modernisation, farm sustainability, adaptation to environmental requirements, market access, and the maintenance of the economic viability of farms.

Coordination analysis

We used a window of 300 seconds between the times of dissemination of similar or identical texts to map the online dissemination network. At the last time point in the visualisation (September 15, 2026, 15:30), the network reaches 160 visible accounts, 2,253 account pairs, 3,270 cumulative links/events, and 12 multiplied unique texts.

The strongest expansion of the network takes place on the evening of September 14. At 19:00 there were 13 accounts and 48 pairs. At 19:05: 57 accounts and 765 pairs. At 19:10: 100 accounts and 1,935 pairs. At 19:15: 103 accounts and 2,028 pairs. It follows that approximately 90% of the 2,253 pairs present in the final network had already formed by 19:15. Subsequent activity extends the network to other accounts, but does not produce a comparable jump.

The structure is highly concentrated. The network data yield 12 connected components. The two largest have 50 accounts each. The first contains 1,044 of the 1,225 theoretically possible pairs among 50 nodes — a density of approximately 85.2%. The second has 981 pairs, approximately 80.1%. Together, the two components contain 100 of the 160 accounts and nearly 90% of all pairs in the network.

The two very large components are built around two nearly identical versions of the message about "almost 200,000 farmers" expected in Victoriei Square and the special measures prepared by the Gendarmerie. It is a mobilisation message published on the evening before the protest, and the figure in it had no connection with reality: the following day, according to press reports, over 3,000 people were in the square.

The strongest coordinated amplification in the entire corpus did not, therefore, concern the violence or the narratives about it, but the inflation of expectations the day before. The difference between the variants is mainly one of punctuation. This is an important finding: if variants with minimal typographical differences are considered the same content, the phenomenon is more concentrated than the raw number of similar texts suggests.

A second pattern is the reappearance of the message about a "scandal in front of the Government," farmers arguing with gendarmes, and the blocking of the road. The same formulation appears on the pages Case de Vis, femina.ro, and ROL.ro at 11:19:11, 11:19:25, and 11:19:39 Bucharest time — differences of only a few seconds. The network subsequently shows other groups of accounts redistributing the same formulation in distinct episodes; some pairs publish the text at average differences of 3–13 seconds. At 15:30 yet another group of accounts appears, multiplying the same formulation with differences of the order of seconds or tens of seconds.

There are also pairs of publications that repeat more than one text. For example, News TV and Stirile TVF are connected through two multiplied formulations (one about the occupation of Victoriei Square, another about clashes with the forces of order) in three distinct windows, with an average difference of 17 seconds. This repetition of the relationship across different texts is a stronger signal than the accidental appearance of a single common text.

How does the European Union appear in the discourse about the protest? 

We separately tracked references to Europe, European, EU, the European Union, Brussels, the European Commission, the European Parliament, and MEP/MEPs. After removing posts in which these terms appeared in contexts unrelated to the demonstration, we identified 67 Facebook posts, representing 58 distinct messages, that make reference to Europe, the EU, or Brussels in the context of the protest, the farmers' demands, or agricultural policies.

Some messages use references to the EU in connection with the restrictions on animal exports and negotiations for their lifting. P.P. wrote about "the blocking of live animal exports to the European Union, extended by Brussels to the end of the year." Other posts mentioned the Action Plan submitted by ANSVSA to the European Commission to unblock exports. A.M.D. stated that "the Government must fight at Brussels for the lifting of the restrictions." Other pieces spoke about negotiations with the European Commission and the measures requested for the resumption of animal trade.

In parallel, posts appear that place Europe or the EU in a conflictual register. A message presenting I.S.'s demands stated that "Europe's goal is to leave us without animals, without livestock farming, without agriculture in Romania." C. separately flagged the circulation of the theory that "the EU would want to starve Romania." I.C. wrote that shepherds "have had their access to the European market cut off through various tricks, invented veterinary diseases, and so on." In these posts, sanitary and commercial restrictions are presented not merely as administrative decisions, but as part of an action directed against Romanian agriculture and livestock farming.

"Brussels" also appears in messages that shift the protest from the area of agricultural demands into a broader political discourse. One post reproduces I.S.'s words through the formulation "Brussels is squeezing us, the money goes to Ukraine and Moldova, they're cutting our pensions." Another text presents a reply to the protest and lists that "instead of remaining a serious discussion about how to solve the problem, the protest began to be filled with 'Round 2 back,' snap elections, Georgescu, Brussels, traitors, and all the sovereigntist broth we already know."

Messages responding to the anti-European discourse also appear, including posts about the attempt to cover the European Union flag in Victoriei Square with Romanian flags and about the role of European funds in financing infrastructure. In the same corpus, the EU thus appears both in connection with concrete negotiations and agricultural policies, and as a reference point in a broader political dispute about sovereignty, legitimacy, and Romania's relationship with European institutions.

What was said on TikTok about the protest?

We separately analysed a set of 100 TikTok videos published by 34 accounts, collected through the hashtag #protest around the September 15 demonstration. In total, these accumulated 150,491 likes, 7,823 comments, and 25,749 shares — 184,063 interactions in all.

The protest moves rapidly from the farmers' demands to the confrontation with the Gendarmerie and the dispute over the causes of the violence. 31 of the 100 videos mention the Gendarmerie or gendarmes in their description. In parallel, messages appear about tear gas, detained persons, injured protesters, damaged Gendarmerie vehicles, and destruction in Victoriei Square. The most shared piece in the sample belongs to G. and announces "the resumption of violence, 24 people injured and over 30 protesters detained." The video had 18,762 likes, 434 comments, and 10,744 shares.

A second direction is the dispute over the alleged existence of "provocateurs," "agitators," or "infiltrated" persons. We identified five videos that explicitly use such terms, with approximately 10,800 cumulative interactions. One of the most visible was published by C. and asked: "Agitator or not? What is happening here? After the incident, the man runs directly toward the gendarmes and disappears among the Gendarmerie vans!" The video had 1,566 likes, 190 comments, and 781 shares.

The protest is also connected on TikTok to political themes that go beyond the farmers' demands. Another video published by G., in which participants chant "Călin Georgescu is president!," accumulated 4,034 likes, 189 comments, and 173 shares. In other pieces, George Simion and AUR appear, along with the theme of the annulment of elections, accusations against the "system," and claims that the press or authorities are selectively presenting events. D.N., for example, wrote that television stations claim the demonstration was infiltrated by "agitators," while people on the street say they have "reached the end of their rope." The piece had 2,453 likes, 126 comments, and 236 shares.

What did the vectors propagating pro-Russian narratives say?

At 11:56, the channel Sptnk necenzurat (Sptnk uncensored) presented the demonstration in predominantly descriptive terms: "Protest by shepherds in Bucharest, in Victoriei Square." The message listed the demands of livestock breeders, from the blocking of exports and the slaughter of animals without compensation to the measures taken by the authorities, and mentioned that the protest could extend over several days.

At 14:06, Uragan asupra Europei (Hurricane over Europe) introduced the protest into a different register: "I express here my fear that the usurpers will take advantage of these protests to resort to provocations, then escalation, then a state of emergency." The message continued with the formulation "we will no longer get rid of this pack of international scum" and suggested that the presence of MPs at the demonstration might cause gendarmes "to be more cautious."

At 16:03, after the confrontations appeared, the same channel distributed a new message about the way television stations were presenting the events: "The gendarmes are being attacked, gendarmes hit with stones and fences, gendarmes beaten by shepherds!", followed by "Poor gendarmes came out to protest against Bolojan and the people are beating them!" In less than five hours, the protest thus appears online first through the livestock breeders' demands, then through a scenario about provocations, escalation, and a state of emergency, and subsequently through the contesting of how the confrontations were being presented by television stations.

About the two channels
Sptnk necenzurat was explicitly identified in a report by the "Elie Wiesel" Institute as "a pro-Russian propaganda channel" that attempts to function as a substitute for Sputnik. GLOBSEC also includes it among the channels connected to the Sputnik Moldova ecosystem and shows its links with other sources that distribute pro-Kremlin narratives.

Uragan asupra Europei has been included in research on Russian influence networks in Romania. A report on foreign interference places the channel in an influence and propaganda ecosystem affiliated with Russia and maps it in connection with Russian influence and disinformation vectors. Context.ro subsequently described it as a channel that "propagates Russian narratives."

Aggressive messaging and calls for mobilisation

From the analysed posts, we selected several messages containing some of the most explicit aggressive, threatening, or mobilisation formulations identified in the dataset.

Diana Iovanovici Șoșoacă - Oficial published, during the protest: "Romaniaaaa, take to the streets! Occupy Bucharest! Don't enter the pens! Let the oxen in power stay in the pens! Today is the day of democracy! What democracy, with gendarmes beating protesters? Down with the dictatorship! Freedom!" The message combines a direct call to mobilisation with formulations such as "Occupy Bucharest!" and "Don't enter the pens!," in the context of confrontations already underway in Victoriei Square. The post had 10,406 reactions, 916 comments, and 1,600 shares.

M.P. wrote, during the confrontations: "In Bucharest, the gendarmes took a beating, which makes me glad." The author speaks of "the Romanians whose elections were stolen," calls the representatives of the government "Bolshevik bandits," and closes with "Come out, Bucharesters, from your homes and take your fate into your own hands!" The post had 1,299 reactions, 321 comments, and 471 shares. Shortly before, M.P. published a new message: "In Bucharest the REVOLUTION has begun! The television stations lie, they do not broadcast THE TRUTH. Get your information from direct sources! Long live the HOMELAND, down with the mafia!" At the time of collection, the post had 2,937 reactions, 545 comments, and 1,700 shares.

The day before the protest, the page G.B.-L. published the message: "CĂLIN GEORGESCU HAS GIVEN THE SIGNAL: LET THE DELOUSING BEGIN!," followed by "THE GREAT PROTEST FOR CHANGE" and the date of the demonstration. It had 2,239 reactions, 169 comments, and 190 shares. The same page also published the message "TO THE FIGHT, ROMANIANS! EVERYONE TO BUCHAREST!," accompanied by a call to people "from all corners of the country" to unite and participate in the demonstration. The post had 302 reactions, 42 comments, and 51 shares.

After the violence appeared, L.P. published a message beginning with "Correct strategy of the satans" and claiming that "instigators" with military training had been infiltrated among the protesters. The text spoke of the possibility that the protest could bring onto the streets "hundreds of thousands of people who would decapitate the mafioso octopus that rules and plunders Romania in peace." The post had 841 reactions, 101 comments, and 516 shares.

On the eve of the demonstration, Aurelian Pavelescu described the situation as a "total war" waged by the "globalist oligarchy" against the rural world. The protest was presented as a movement that "will not stop until the country is liberated from lies and betrayal," and the message closed with "Down with the boyars!" The post recorded 152 reactions, 36 comments, and 311 shares.

One of the posts with the highest engagement in the selection belongs to the page I.M.ro. The author calls the Government's representatives "the filth of the Romanian Government," continues with "Have they no shame, the shameless ones?," and closes with "Ordinary filth! Because there's no other way to talk to you." The post had accumulated 2,895 reactions, 537 comments, and 982 shares.

After the incidents, I.M. published a message linking the violence to discussions about the regulation of social networks and asking whether the protest had turned violent because people had been mobilised online. The text contained the formulation "Hey, have you no shame, you mangy mongrels?" and argued that there is a "purpose to the violence." The post had 544 reactions, 81 comments, and 118 shares.

B.S. described those criticising the demonstrators' behaviour as "these idiots" and "aquarium imbeciles." The author urged them to watch how French farmers protest, adding that, by comparison, Romanian protesters are "a bunch of poor little lambs." The post recorded 285 reactions, 2 comments, and 28 shares.

D.I. published during the protest a message accusing the Gendarmerie of using "the same scheme of instigation and diversion" and claiming that "the real shepherds are being trampled by the Gendarmerie." The post goes further and states that persons "trained by the Gendarmerie" were used to throw fences and create the impression that the violence had been provoked by "ultras of Bucharest football teams." The message argues that "the entire diversion has a single purpose: to give the forces of disorder a reason to enter violently among the protesters and break up the demonstration before it gains momentum" and describes a repetitive scenario in which "the gendarmerie's collaborators, dressed as protesters, with their faces covered, set the tone for some pointless violence." At the time of collection, the post had 488 reactions, 179 comments, and 112 shares.

Methodology

Thematic analysis

We collected a corpus of 1,186 public posts from Facebook and 100 posts from TikTok, in Romanian, disseminated during the period September 14–15, 2026. Following dataset processing, we excluded 121 posts from Facebook that did not fit any of the identified themes, some of them containing too little information to be interpreted. For thematic analysis we used a Machine Learning (ML) model for grouping similar texts, interpreted through a hybrid Human-In-The-Loop system based on NLP (Natural Language Processing) and RAG (Retrieval-Augmented Generation).

The initial taxonomy comprises three general themes ("Social protests," "Social tensions," and "Agricultural problems") and 20 placements of particular themes; some labels repeat across multiple categories ("Violent protest and Gendarmerie intervention" appears in all three; "Unauthorised farmers' protest" appears in both "Social protests" and "Agricultural problems"), such that the 20 placements correspond to 17 distinct labels.

Semantically proximate labels were brought together into four analytical themes. Theme 1 (mobilisation of farmers and economic demands) brings together: unauthorised/mass protest by farmers, shepherds, livestock breeders, protest by shepherds from Botoșani, unauthorised protest and announced checks; the differences between them relate to the words used, the scale attributed to the demonstration, and its characterisation as authorised or not. Theme 2 (escalation of the protest and Gendarmerie intervention) brings together: violent protest and Gendarmerie intervention (present in all three categories), violent protest by Romanian shepherds, legitimate protest and violence in Victoriei Square. Theme 3 (politicisation of the protest) starts from the label "George Simion's critique of the farmers' protests" and includes the texts about AUR, sovereigntists, and alleged provocateurs automatically classified under other labels. Theme 4 (structural problems of agriculture) brings together the five labels from "Agricultural problems" without direct connection to the protest: support for European and Romanian farmers, challenges and solutions in agriculture, financial support for farmers, challenges and innovations in agriculture, daily challenges for farmers.

The TikTok sample and the perishability of figures

The 100 TikTok videos were collected through the hashtag #protest, which tilts the selection toward already politicised content and does not represent the entire discussion on the platform about the demonstration. The interaction figures, both on Facebook and TikTok, are those recorded at the time of collection (September 15, 2026) and change over time.

How we calculated reach_proxy

The reach_proxy index was used to measure audience and was calculated by summing the metrics available in the dataset, namely reactions, comments, and shares. We summed this index for all unique messages belonging to a theme, obtaining the "Unique Proxy" score. In the case of multiple identical messages, we included the message with the highest values. The "Total Proxy" score was obtained by adding all reach_proxy values for all texts belonging to a theme. The difference between "Total Proxy" and "Unique Proxy" reflects the audience obtained through verbatim-distributed messages. Thus, the Unique / Total ratio indicates the percentage of audience obtained from original posts, out of the total posts.

This material is funded through the Tech Accountability Grants 2026 Programme of the European Fact-Checking Standards Network (EFCSN), under the CERV grant (no. 101236606) awarded by EACEA.

The views and opinions expressed in this material belong exclusively to the authors and do not necessarily reflect the position of the European Union or the European Education and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). Neither the European Union nor the funding authority can be held responsible for them.